48 THE. BINOCULAR.S " H OW I'd like to go to the Abruzzi to buy dishes!" his mother often said. It was the one trip she really had at heart. "Just you and I in your little car-with room for only the dishes in the back." From time to time, some friend with a big car offered to drive them. "Shall we go? Shall we go?" she would say and look ready to leave. But they hadn't got around to going. Then she had fallen ill. She had im- proved, and again she spoke to him of the Abruzzi trip. Her illness was one of relapses and remissions. During the remissions, she would say something about going, wistfully-more wistfully, it seemed to him, after each of the re- lapses. Finally, one came from which she did not recover. It was four months now since she had died. He and his wife were living in her house In Tuscany. The set of dishes there served to remind him of the trip not taken. Plain white, with a couple of green circles at the rim, they had been bought by his mother provi- sionally, to discard as soon as she could find what she was looking for. They had the merit of heing unpretentious, but that was all; they didn't offend you. At the same time, like a can vas with a piece of stripping round it, their blank- ness was intriguing. You felt a constant urge for some kind of form to take place in that blankness. It invited form. The right form was not easy to ..... " .. ." {,:., .... ,: .. . , . . ""0.,,., r< "'<01 t j\! ' I, .$ I' , '%-. \ ø' \. /' ð if , ) .. ""7-:" .'. r :"' r, ,'" I\I' r baby, he had gone there for a few days-he by car, they by train, to avoid the bumps and bends of the roads They were getting ready to return home- again he by car, with the luggage, and they by train-when he said, "I think 1'1] go back by way of the Abruzzi and Umbria. I want to get some dishes. I may take two days. Don't worry about me if I'm late." Out of Rome, he headed north along the Tiber for a way, then left its valley, climbed the Sabine Mountains, proceed- ed to Rieti, and turned east toward the Apennines. He crossed the great divide, descended to a plateau, only to begin climbing again up toward the water- shed, northeast of where he had crossed it. He reached a high, saddlelike moun- tain pass. From it, between spectacular mountains, the road ran down along a deep and narrow gully carved by a rIver. It was a good thing the car was open, he thought; from a closed one, unless he leaned out, he wouldn't have been able to see the mountaintops, they were so high and he was down so low-almost level with the river. The river glistened between fallen boulders, some so huge no flood could ever budge them, others precariously balanced on one end-colossal pillars that the cur- rent continuously undermined and would someday topple over with a splash. He raced the river-always be- fore him and behind him, like the road. From bridge to bridge, dazzled by its silver light, he raced it, joined it, left it, caught sight of it and lost it, came on it so close he felt he'd run it down, only to see it curving round the corner of the gully a mile away. The gully got no sun, though it was late morning and Septem- ber. But he could see the sun shining on the brow of the mountain high over the river, on the opposite side. Up there, several white objects caught his eye Rocks, were they? But why so white, when everythIng around, and the rocky cliff it- self, was gray? Puz- zled, he stopped the car and reached for a pair of binoculars he had inside a basket on the back seat He ]ooked through them. Sheets-bedsheets laId out to dry in the find-not In the shops wIthin reach, at any rate. Stuffed birds, stiff flowers, patterns so often used that they looked dusty, deliberate wriggles-that's what you got here. In the Abruzzi, it was different. There, in the town of Aquila, six }TearS before, while walking down a narrow lane, he had found a sma!] ce- ramics store. Each cup, vase, plate, and saucer had a painting-a landscape with trees, a brook, a little house, and mountains in the background, done with colors that held meaning: the blue of distance, the green of freshness, the brown of earth. They were earthy dishes-glazed clayware, terra cotta- not stamped, not out of a mold, not printed but made by hand Each had a different landscape, reflecting a mood, a fancy, a moment in a person's life. And on the back of each, handwritten, like a signature, was the name of the Abruzzi mountain village they came from-Castelli. He had bought several and taken them home. HIs mother, who had an even greater passion than he had for dishes, had liked them very much, and for a long time-six years-he had wanted to take her with him and go to Castelli to buy more, right in the place where they were made. N ow it was too late to take her. Still, he felt he should make the trip-felt it almost as a duty. Perhaps in some su- pernatural way she would be with him, partaking of his pleasure everywhere. He was in Rome. With his wife and 'I':! r-- \j{ ;E t',1T it. "" f 6", .f (o L' , ' ,OQ .I:ôt '-, \, ::. ::: So, . .\\ ,. \ 1 " ", \ {). f \ I L \ \ ':I * ... . w ,J .. · v SEPTEMDER 19, 19 b+ - \ \ \' t